Today’s top stories

NEWS: Top Post Office managers have awarded themselves a 26% salary increase, despite gross annual net losses and an almost-three-month strike that is crippling the already ailing parastatal, Business Day reports. Post Office workers have been on strike seeking a 15% wage increase and the hastier conversion of casual staff to permanent employee status, while the company is offering an annual increase of up to 6,5% for two years. The company’s net loss has risen to R359 million this year from R337 million last year. According to an unpublished draft of the Post Office’s annual report, the total bill for the four executive directors as well as 20 senior managers rocketed to R32,5 million in the year ended March, compared to R25,8 million paid to the executives last year.

NEWS: Six of the seven South African Airways non-executive board members due to be axed by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown have previously blown the whistle on poor governance at the airline, Business Day reports. The six board members have, in the past, also reportedly raised the alarm over procurement processes of new aircrafts. Brown has called a meeting, scheduled to take place on Thursday, to consider presentations by the seven and to consider a resolution for their removal. Only the chairman, who is considered to be a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, is expected to be spared from removal from the board.

BUSINESS: Tiger Brands is expected to destroy the 17 000 packs of Tastic Simply Delicious sauces and ready-to-eat rice products recalled last week. The products were recalled after some of the products tested positive for traces of industrial dye Sudan 1, a banned carcinogenic colourant, Business Day reports. The giant packaged goods company found the colourants in seven of the 20 brands in the product range – which are imported from an Indian supplier – produced in June and July this year. Managing executive Naresh Singh said the entire range, including unaffected brands and products are being removed and destroyed. “We’re taking it back to our sites and it will be destroyed by a third party. We will get a certificate for the destruction of the product. At the moment we are engaging with the supplier, they are still investigating what’s happened,” he said.

NEWS: Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene has little room to manoeuvre in his maiden mid-term budget speech on Wednesday and may have to get tough on state-owned entities and civil servants in a way that will earn him little political popularity, observers have predicted. Economists Annabel Bishop and Mike Schussler agreed that Nene would have to keep a tight rein on spending, given lower revenue intake and warnings of further credit down-ratings. Schussler said this would require the minister to get stricter with parastatals and make good on his predecessor Pravin Gordhan’s warning to state employees to prepare for an end to salary increases above the inflation rate. “It is going to be difficult in the political climate that is still leaning to the left, but he is going to have to say we need to control our costs,” Schussler added, cautioning that the continual cost of bailing out stricken state-owned entities, notably SAA, was untenable.

SPORT: Will Banyana Banyana succeed where Bafana Bafana have failed? Banyana team captain Janine van Wyk believes the team has what it takes to defeat their greatest rivals Nigeria in a Group B clash in the CAF African Women’s Championship semi-final on Wednesday, Supersport.com reports. Should Banyana emerge victorious at the Sam Nujoma Stadium in Namibia, the team will qualify for the World Cup. Nigeria will most likely be looking for revenge after Banyana Banyana knocked them out of the competition in Bata, Equatorial Guinea. “We have to take it step by step. We shouldn’t be looking back at 2012 as it was a completely different situation than we were in. We had a different coach and played a different style of football,” said van Wyk.